Another neocon double standard

Milwaukee blogger and funkmaster the Brew City Brawler raises a valid question which shames me that I didn't think of meself, since it's right up in one of my favorite bailiwicks.

About a year ago, then-presidential candidate John Edwards became involved in a PR kerfuffle over his association with one Amanda Marcotte, whom he'd hired as a campaign staffer. It seems Ms. Marcotte, at her own blog Pandagon, had penned some vulgate vulgar characterizations of the Catholic Church's teachings on contraception (together with at least one accurate one: "ancient mythology").

At the time, naturally, the conservative blogosphere went into Gamma 9 outrage mode over Marcotte's rhetoric. Even beloved Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel "right-wing guy" Patrick McIlheran delighted in further limning the association between Marcotte and Edwards. (Via, incidentally, the idiotic National Review Online scribe Kathryn Jean Lopez, the likes of whom must have sent NR founder William F. Buckley, Jr. spinning into his grave.)

Nowadays, however, there issues nary a peep nor squeak from McIlheran over fellow right-wing guy John McCain's embrace of the "Reverend" John C. Hagee, a Texas-sized fundamentalist buffoon with a Satan-sized distaste for the Vatican.

This is no wiseass feminazi blogger lambasting the Pope's designs on her fallopian tubes, this is a devout and inspired Man of Christ speaking further to the inerrant authority of God's Holy Word.

Whither McIlheran, the Brawler wonders. Apparently McIlheran has been otherwise engaged in a mini-crusade of his own, in a failed attempt at making a religious hypocrite of former Secretary of State Madeleine Albright.

McIlheran's problem, as usual, is that some of his readers are smarter than he is, in particular — not surprisingly — those that disagree with him. There's Andrew, for instance, who takes issue with McIlheran's impotent ploys:

Trying to cast your critics as spiritual voids disrespectful to your particular religious creed is preposterous. Slinging these phony labels around only bolsters your "pity party" bunker mentality where the poor Christians are holding out against Nero and his immoral onslaught. Seriously ... where do you come up with this martyr complex? You're missing the point of my post, and twisting it, but I suppose that's what you're intending to do.

Poor McIlheran, busted again. He really should just stick to the usual swooning manlove for Milton Friedman.